Word: comical
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...dancers would even attempt. In Polyanka (The Meadow), files of dancers snaked across the stage in a sinuous blur of speed, hurled past one another in a complex tracery. Partisans had the black-cloaked dancers gliding in roller-smooth imitation of horsemen on patrol; Soccer sent them cartwheeling in comic, splay-fingered lunges for an imaginary ball...
Given better material to work with, the Leverett House actors might have created a very pleasant evening; done with high virtuosity, the plays might have been high entertainment. As it is, except for a long stretch of good comic writing at the beginning of The Marriage, Gogol provides only occasional wisps of straw for these actors to make bricks with...
...Hartman might, to good effect, have sat down hard on most of the members of his supporting cast: When the principals are off-stage, Robert Johnston's blessed quietude is the eye in a hurricane of overacting. Otherwise, Mr. Hartman has done a good job: his occasional attempts at comic business are almost uniformly successful. JULIUS NOVICK
...tenth annual Emmy ceremonies of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, in which TV's most skilled practitioners hail the past year's best performances. Confessed Danny Thomas, the Hollywood M.C. on a Hollywood-Manhattan coaxial hookup: "They should never have comedians as presenters. Any comic on a dais figures he's got to do four or five minutes or the audience will think he's a bum." Milton Berle, TV's funnyman emeritus, quipped for 90 seconds longer than his allotted seven minutes. But like the man condemned to hang, Berle...
Noel Coward provides three tales of domestic tribulation, some gatling-gun dialogue and "sophisticated wit," and several of Britain's most capable comic artists take it from there--to make the current Brattle fare well worth indulgence any time this week...